"I will," she said. Then she gave him a look. "What is your name? I know it can't be Shadow."
"My name is Tarrin, little mother," he smiled.
"Goodbye, Tarrin," she said, putting her little arms around his neck. He held her close for a moment, and then let her go.
"Goodbye, Janette," he returned. "Don't forget to shut and lock the door," he warned. Then he let her go, and turned away from her. He didn't want to look at her again, else they'd be eating breakfast together. He changed form again, then slunk out of the garden, wriggled through the fence, and then went off in search of the Tower.
It only took him about an hour to find the Tower. The problem was getting in.
The guards were as thick as fleas on a dog. They patrolled the fence in such tighly packed patrols that it would be absolutely impossible to sneak in. He didn't want to just walk up to the front gate, because he wasn't sure how they would react to him. They may have received orders to kill him. He had no idea how long that he'd been gone, so he wasn't sure if they thought he was a raving maniac. Not that he'd been too far from it, but he didn't want to have to fight off a pack of guards just to prove that he wasn't crazy. He'd sat there and watched until well after the sun came up, looking for an opportunity to get in, but one never materialized.
He was laying under a wagon, pondering the situation, then something quite suddenly grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. He yowled and tried to kick free, but that grip suddenly wrapped around his neck. If he struggled too much, he'd break his own neck, so he went very still.
"I am very put out with you, cub," Jesmind's flat voice came to him, even as her smell, concealed by the miasma of the city, reached his nose. She turned him around and gazed into his eyes. Tarrin couldn't struggle, and with her paws on him like that, he couldn't even change form. "If you had any idea what I've gone through to find you," she grunted, then she sighed. "Ah well, that's water under the bridge now."
He hissed threateningly at her, and her flat eyes narrowed.
"Don't take that tone with me, cub," she said ominously. "Or I may forget my promise to your mother and kill you here and now."
"Promise?" he asked in the manner of the cat.
"I promised her I would bring you back alive, and I'll do just that. Now shut up. I regret it enough as it is, but my word is my word."
That revelation came on two fronts. One, that she had went out to find him not to kill him, but to return him to his mother. The other was that she had very strong prejudices against lying. When he split from her, she accused him of breaking his word. Now he understood why it made her so angry. It seemed to be a part of her elemental nature to accept a promise as a sacred bond, and if it was broken, then it violated her to the very core.
The ten men at the gate lined up to block her at first, but a few deadly looks made them part like water before her. Five followed her, at a discrete distance, as she made her way along the paved road that led to the central Tower. She carried Tarrin like a purse, still throttled at the neck, and Tarrin was pretty sure that it was because of him that they let her inside the grounds. "I can walk," he told her.
"No, you can't," she said in a grim tone. "If I let you go, you may take off again."
"I won't," he said. "You found me because I was coming back."
"I'm not taking any chances," she said in a cold tone.
She took him into the Tower, along the curved hallways, up stairs, until she reached the antechamber to the Keeper's office. Duncan, the Sorcerer who acted as the Keeper's personal secretary and attendant, stood as Jesmind barged into his office. In that large room, his desk was right by the door leading to the Keeper's office, and three of the four walls were lined with chairs and couches. He said not a word, just eyed the black cat in her paw keenly, then simply stepped to the side and opened the door for her.
The Keeper was sitting behind her redwood desk, scratching out a letter or some other correspondence, when Jesmind marched into her private domain. The floor was covered with a single massive Arakite carpet, and two ornate, deeply cushioned chairs stood in front of her desk. A portrait of a vibrant brown-haired man in robes hung behind her on the wall, the room's only wall decoration. The Keeper's gray eyes narrowed as she looked up at the disturbance.
"I didn't think you'd have the nerve to face me, Were-cat," she said in a steely voice, setting down her pen.
Jesmind raised her arm, the one holding Tarrin, and then dropped him on her desk. "I said I'd bring him back alive. Here he is. Now take your thrice-damned curse off of me."
"Tarrin?" the Keeper asked in surprise.
Tarrin changed form right on top of her desk, and then he was kneeling on its wooden surface, staring down at the woman calmly. "Keeper," he said formally. "Can I hit her now?"
The Keeper laughed. "I may let you," she said. "Are you alright?"
"As well as can be expected," he said calmly. "I, just needed time alone for a while. I'm ready to go back."
"Good," she said. "Jesmind, leave."
"Not until you take your spell off!" she shouted. "I upheld my end of the bargain! Take it off now!"
"I can't do that," she said in an ominous voice. "You're still a danger to Tarrin, and I won't allow you to hurt him. Keeping you tame is in my best interest at the moment."
"You lied to me!" she screamed, her claws extending as her eyes flared from within with that unholy greenish aura.
"Jesmind!" Tarrin barked, jumping off the desk and putting a paw on her chest as the other took hold of her arm. In that instant, Tarrin came to understand why Jesmind hated him so much. It was more than a personal feeling between them. When he left her, she accused him of lying to her, of breaking his word. That was so totally against the basic nature of the Cat that it was her nature to take people at their word, and expect them to live up to it. Lying was a violation of the natural order of things, and that made any Were-cat angry. That, and there was her duty. She had a duty to try to kill him, to stop him from doing what he very nearly did. He could respect that, even more so now that he'd come so close to going mad. He looked back at the Keeper. "You made a promise," he said grimly. "Take the spell off of her."
"I won't do that," she said.
"You will," he growled. "Because if Jesmind doesn't kill you, I will."
The Keeper's eyes widened. "But you hate her," she said. "She wants to kill you!"
"A promise is a promise," he said flatly. "I didn't understand that before. I do now."
Jesmind gave him a strange look, and she put a paw on his shoulder.
"You will take that spell off of her, and you will do it right now, or else this room will need a lot of cleaning. If you think either of us are nasty now, you should see what we can do when we're working together."
The Keeper blanched, standing up. "I'll need the Council. It's Ritual Sorcery. I can't do it alone."
"Then have someone bring them here," he said in a dangerous tone. "Now." Duncan paused at the door. "Now!"
" Duncan, go get the Council," the Keeper commanded.
"Don't think this changes anything between us," Jesmind said in a quiet voice.
"I don't expect it to," he replied. "I have no real quarrel with you, Jesmind. You have one with me. I don't look at you as an enemy, no matter how hard you try."